Doctors to use micro robots in human body for medicine delivery

A team of researchers in Germany have developed a tiny robot that can swim through a human body's blood stream and might be used in the future to deliver medicine.

The team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Germany developed the tiny robot that does not require an engine or batteries.

They expect that the tiny robot might be used in the future to treat a variety of human ailments as they are capable of performing several bio medical tasks, such as drug delivery, and as diagnostics.

The team was headed by Professor Peer Fischer at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart. The issue that the scientists are facing is that swimming or locomotion through water is not actually possible for tiny machines because the viscosity is different. However, swimming is possible in biological fluids such as blood if driven by magnetic fields because the it is non-Newtonian fluid, which means that viscosity changes in response to pressure.

"This is great news because we can now use really simply actuation schemes, to build swimming micro robots that can move through tissue and bio medical relevant fluids," said Prof. Peer Fischer.